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Afternoon Tea turns over a new leaf at popular Waterdown shop

There's not a lace doily in sight at Tea at the White House, which offers a modern casual service and more than 250 loose-leaf teas to choose from

Tea at the White House is not your typical tearoom. If you envision lace doilies and other old-fashioned accoutrements you may be surprised when you walk into 35 Main Street North, Waterdown.

The business opened in 1999 at the White House building on Dundas but was purchased by Connor Skingley and Andrew May in 2017. “Connor and I always had a love of tea from when we were kids,” says Andrew. “He has a background in baking. I have a background in marketing and business, so it was a good partnership. We had no experience in restaurants or food, so it was very interesting the first little while.”

Tea at the White House serves Afternoon Tea, a light lunch served on a three-tiered stand. The bottom tier offers elegant finger sandwiches, including an egg salad, a cucumber and cream cheese, and a salmon mousse.  The next tier features scones with clotted cream and a rotating selection of homemade jams.

The top layer is filled with one- or two-bite decadent desserts. Right now, they’re featuring a Victoria Sponge Cake, a Pavlova, which is a meringue filled with flavoured clotted cream, a delicious cheesecake filled with one of their jams, and something they call a Pink Sin Bar, which is graham cracker and coconut topped with a bright pink sugar layer. All the desserts, jams, and pretty much everything are made from scratch.

“We’re really well known for our scones,” says May. “At Christmas time it’s a tradition for a lot of people in the area to pre-order their scones for Christmas Eve and pick them up at the store with a bottle of clotted cream. We do about 2,000 scones on Christmas Eve.”

Mother’s Day and any royal event are also big scone days at Tea at the White House. Although they don’t change their famous English sweet scone very often, around Valentine’s Day they do a decadent double-chocolate version.

Part tea room, part retail shop, Tea at the White House sells a lot of loose-leaf tea to their customers, in addition to a large online business that ships anywhere in the world. The brand is also available at about 200 locations, including Loblaws stores and independent grocery stores in Ontario. They also do a lot of private labelling and are the official tea provider of Parliament; they've created a blend called Maple Earl Grey that’s sold in the Parliamentary Gift Shop.

With somewhere in the vicinity of 250 loose-leaf teas, Skingley and May are always creating new ones.

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The "tea wall" at Waterdown's Tea at the White House features more than 250 varieties - but you won't find any coffee in the shop. Brenda Jefferies

“We offer a lot of options, which is great because we do not, have not, and will not offer coffee. We have not only black teas and green teas; we also offer 'herbal' teas that are generally just fruit, herbs, and things like that. We have lots of options for the non-tea drinker as well.”

Their most popular tea is Cream Earl Grey, a black tea mellowed with maple and vanilla. The second most popular, and May's personal favourite, is Sticky Toffee Pudding, which boasts a rich, caramel sweetness.

“Something new as of last year that has really taken off for us is a blend called Canadian Butter Tart, and it is literally what you think it will taste like, a sweet, caramel-y, maple-y blend,” says May. “There’s lots of experimentation. Right now, we’re trying to do a shortbread-inspired tea. 

The shop also works with customers on special requests, he adds. "We have a lot of people that will have the last little bit of tea in their tin. They’ll bring that into us, and we’ll do our best to recreate it. We have a lot of ingredients at our disposal that we can do very small batches of teas for customers, and we keep those on file, so whenever someone wants a particular tea that we don’t stock all the time, we can generally do that within a couple of days.”

For an Afternoon Tea Service, May recommends making a reservation a couple of weeks in advance, especially for weekends. And Mother’s Day is a big day at Tea at the White House.

“I know it sounds early, but we actually start our reservations for that on Monday, March 3. We’ll be booked usually by a few days into March,” says May.

For more information on Tea at the White House, including shop hours and online ordering, visit teaatthewhitehouse.com.

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The dining room at Tea at the White House gives off a modern casual vibe - with not a lace doily in sight. Brenda Jefferies

 

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